Comprised of correspondence, survey
forms, notes, and drafts, the Texas Historical Foundation (THF) Photographic Collections in Texas Project Records,
1982-1987, document the work of Richard Pearce-Moses on behalf of the THF to publish
Photographic Collections in Texas: A Union Guide.

Founded as a fundraising arm of the Texas Historical Commission in 1954, the Texas
Historical Foundation (THF) supports research on Texas history and the preservation
of artifacts and historical documentation. In 1982, a suggestion made at a THF
photographic workshop for information professionals sparked the beginning of a
project to survey photographic collections in Texas and create a descriptive guide.
The next year, the foundation mailed surveys to repositories in the state before
receiving funding in 1984 and 1985. Richard Pearce-Moses became head of the guide
project, sending out a more extensive mail survey and visiting several of the larger
collections. In 1987, Texas A&M University Press published the resulting
descriptive guide, Photographic Collections in Texas: A Union
Guide.

Comprised of correspondence, survey forms, notes, and drafts, the Texas Historical
Foundation (THF) Photographic Collections in Texas
Project Records, 1982-1987, document the work of Richard Pearce-Moses on behalf of
the THF to publish Photographic Collections in Texas: A Union
Guide. Arranged alphabetically by city then by collection, repository
surveys and field notes, 1982-1987, contain survey forms, brochures, and
publications about different repositories’ collections as well as Pearce-Moses’
notes about the collections. Five drafts of the guide chronicle the editing
processing, including the first draft with revisions by the repositories themselves,
the second and third drafts edited by Mark Longley, and the two copies of the final
draft, one with corrections from Texas A&M University Press and the other
with Pearce-Moses’ corrections and notes for indexing the book. Additionally, the
collection includes a project history by Pearce-Moses.

Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the
National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe
Center’s “History Revealed: Bringing Collections to Light project,” 2009-2011.